


In the Dark

by bunnyfication



Category: Marvel (Comics), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, M/M, Tentacles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-23
Updated: 2018-04-23
Packaged: 2019-04-27 00:06:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14413392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bunnyfication/pseuds/bunnyfication
Summary: In which Tony keeps secrets and Steve is kind of a dick about it when he finds out. Also they are in space and Tony isn't quite as human as he seems.





	In the Dark

**Author's Note:**

> Once, in a galaxy far far away... this started as a fill for the steve/tony tentacle party just like that other fic I have. My gf regndoft/krypkaktus started writing this in 2012, but I ended up adopting it and now, six-ish years and many fandoms later, it's done! :D Word of warning: There is no tentacle sex in this. There are barely tentacles in this. If anything, it's pretty much a soap opera episode in space starring these two dumbasses who cannot communicate to save their lives. Or, as gf put it all those years ago: "how to deal with the fact that your boyfriend is secretly a space squid"
> 
> (It's also unbetaed bc after all these years I just want to be free of this curse. :'D)

 

 

_”Just concentrate on the shields, I have this.”_

Tony’s voice was clear over the speakers, with only a slight static to it. He sounded out of breath, but as confident as ever, facing down two A.I.M stingers, a new type of small battle drones that had taken them by surprise with their brutal efficiency.

They’d already taken down three others, at the cost of damaged weapons systems and minor cracks in the hull. According to Tony even one more hit in the wrong place might make the damage critical, so they couldn’t lower the shields before the remaining enemies had been destroyed.

Which left Tony as their last line of defence until the ship’s automatic repairs could get the weapons online again.

He was dancing ahead of the two drones, playing a deadly game of tag, evading their weapons while trying to get a hit in himself. He’d already landed several, and one drone was damaged from a glancing strike from the ship earlier, but A.I.M built their robots sturdy.

At the moments, the lights were low in the bridge room of the spaceship Avenger, the large windows showing the scene outside, with the scrolling rows of calculation and symbols at the sides making it seem strangely unreal, like something in a simulation.

Pietro was following the messages with intense attention, the speed of output too fast for anyone else. His hands could fly over the keys just as fast, but right now they were still, waiting, just like everyone else there.

Most of the crew, Steve knew, was taking care of other tasks, checking the damage on the ship or simply staying out of the way.

There was a sound of footsteps from behind him, and then Carol’s voice.

“Reporting from the lower deck, even the most serious damage seems like it’ll hold, barring further stress, “ she said, voice steady. However, the fact that she’d reverted to her old military speech pattern revealed she wasn’t quite as calm as she sounded.

Steve glanced to the side and could tell Carol was remembering the times she would have been out there, not wearing a flight suit like Tony was, just using her own power. He couldn’t imagine having that sort of power and then losing it. He wondered sometimes if he’d been too harsh voting her off the ship back then.

Then he turned back to the battle before them, reminding himself that was in the past, and had been the right decision, based on what he’s known then.

He didn’t like it, sitting duck while Tony defended them alone, but he’d come through against worse odds, and Steve trusted him to— he lost his trail of thought as one of the A.I.M. drones shot at Tony, the laser beam seeming to skim right next to him.

Tony was hovering ahead of them now, the plasma whips coming out of the back of his flight suit fanned out almost wing like, sparking light. Was he… damn the man, was he _luring_ the drones closer?

“Tenseconds before weapon systemsonline,” Pietro spat out, and Clint perked up at the weapon’s control.

 _”Do not put the shields down, I have them!”_ Tony’s voice crackled over the comm, urgent.

“Tony, we can—“ Steve began to protest, but Tony interrupted him.

 _“Too risky. Just trust me,”_ he said softly.

Tony’s repulsors caught the damaged drone. Sparks flew from the robot and it convulsed and twitched grotesquely, before the lights at its eye sockets dimmed out.

Perhaps there was enough artificial intelligence in the remaining drone for it to realize it was alone, as its attacks seemed to kick up a notch, become riskier. It flew straight at Tony, and for a heart stopping moment Steve was _sure_ it had hit him with the lasers, but Tony didn’t flinch or even try to evade.

Steve knew this manoeuvre, knew it and hated it. As soon as Tony returned safe he’d let him know it. Again.

Tony’s plasma whips closed on the drone, like an ancient earth sea creature Steve had seen on a vid once. The shining strands curled on it, stopping its movement, catching on the laser weapons and pushing them towards empty space, and then Tony opened his unibeam on the robot, which lasted only a few seconds under the full power of it, before exploding soundlessly.

It was a move that could only be used against a single opponent, if Tony knew he’d be safe after defeating it. Effective, but draining enough on the suit’s power that he wouldn’t have any left after before a recharge.

 _”Told you I had it,”_ Tony said, sounding winded. It was difficult to say from the distance, but his suit looked blackened and banged up in places.

“Can you get back under your own power?” Steve asked, but then Carol gasped at his side, and at the same time Pietro called out a warning.

“Tonytheotherdrone!”

The second drone hadn’t been quite finished after all, just smart enough to play dead. Now it was aiming a laser at Tony, hovering in the air with no power left to defend himself.

The voice announcing the shields dropping sounded almost at the same moment, and the ship’s now functional cannon aimed. It hit the drone, at the same time as its lasers reached Tony, and the following explosion whited out the scene for a moment.

There was no movement in its aftermath.

Steve waited for the wry remark about how A.I.M.s constructions were getting too sneaky. Something that would let him know Tony was still alive. Anything.

He knew they had a monitor on Tony, knew exactly where to look for it. He even, though he tried not to listen to it, knew the little sound that followed his heartbeat while he was out in the suit. He didn’t look, but the moment he’d thought about the sound his ears had searched for it, whether he wanted them to or not.

It wasn’t there.

 

*

 

Space had never seemed hostile to Steve Rogers, even long before he’d left his native New New York for the stars.

He hadn’t been able to understand the people who had frowned at his younger self when Steve had told them what he wanted to do with his life; the people who shook their head and stated they’d gladly leave the galaxy to people brave, curious or desperate enough to go out there.

Steve had seen enough now to know that those people had had cause to be afraid. He’d been scared plenty of times, but more than a decade had passed since the last time he’d felt _lost_.

Tony was gone. For the first time since the crew that was now his had found him, floating in a metal case through the Asteroid belt, Steve felt like the universe had grown too big and cold for him.

“I suppose I’m a widower now,” he said tonelessly when Dr Blake joined him on deck after everyone else had left, the ship running on autopilot away from the scene of the battle.

They’d never been properly married, not the way Steve would have liked; on solid ground, with a proper ceremony and a honeymoon, but that had hardly mattered to the crew. Tony and Steve had been the married couple before they’d even got together.

Don placed a hand on his shoulder in sympathy.

“You did good work out there today, keeping everyone in check. No one needs more rest than you do, Captain,” he spoke softly, in the tones of a man who had handled grieving loved ones before. He was a doctor, after all, Steve thought distantly, still feeling strangely numb.

 “Thank you,” he said. “For retrieving the body.”

“Ah, yes…” Steve noted distantly that Don sounded hesitant now.

Don hadn’t removed his hand; now, he squeezed lightly before letting go.

“Steve, as your friend, I want you to know that I’m here for you. We all are. You--”

He hesitated again, as if grasping for words; delivering the word of someone’s death, timely or not, never got easy. Steve would know; he’d been a soldier for almost half his life.

“Was it painful?” he asked, hearing his voice come out too harsh, almost unemotional.

Don only looked at him with that same, unwavering compassion.

“No Steve, I don’t think he felt a thing. But there’s something—”

Suddenly, Steve found he couldn’t listen to one more word. He turned around and walked away before Don could say anything else, his boots thumping on the flooring, even with whatever sound-dampening material Tony had used for it.

He’d always said echoing contributed to a more stressful milieu, or something like that, and Steve had had to admit he didn’t miss the clattering of mesh flooring from the military ships of his era, though he’d never thought of it at the time.

Tony had always thought of details like that.

Steve might be the captain, but it had always been Tony’s ship. He’d designed it after all; few things had been as dear to him.

Where were they going to bury him? He’d never spoken of a home planet, or family, and Steve hadn’t wanted to ask. He’d figured Tony would tell him some day, if it was important… but he He hadn’t. He never would, now.

He closed his eyes and focused on the pulsating pain behind his eyelids. He’d been distantly aware of a headache for a while now and his shoulders felt stiff.

The headache was probably psychosomatic, but the knowledge didn’t help him any.

It had always been a possibility, considering what they did. Steve had always been aware of that; hell, this wasn’t the first time they’d lost a crew member. Both Tony and Steve had fallen into bed after close confrontations with death on more than one occasion.

He remembered the first time they’d kissed only too vividly. Tony’s hair had been singed from crossfire and his arm had been in a sling when Steve had cupped the back of his head and pressed their lips together, too high on adrenaline and relief to feel mortified.

Another door ahead of him opened, as soundlessly as ever. Even as he entered his cabin and prepared mechanically for bed, he felt strangely unmoored. The familiar surroundings were touched with a sense of unreality.

Everything here had been made by Tony, he thought, fashioned in his mind before it had been made reality.

Steve had expected it to hurt to lose Tony, a deep and encompassing pain, if it ever happened.

But right now, everything just seemed distant. All he felt was a dull ache in his chest. His head hurt worse than that from dehydration and stress.

It reminded him of his first time on the ship out of stasis. He’d felt detached from everything in much the same way back then; his body swift and strong while his mind was an entire century away, fighting an interplanetary war he hadn’t even seen end.

After they’d found him, for weeks Steve would wake up and for a split second, before realizing where he was, he’d think nothing had changed at all. And when he remembered what had happened he’d lose everything again. Waking up had always been the worst.

He’d wandered the corridors back then, reluctant to return to sleep. Had stared at the dark water lining the walkways on the agricultural level, searching for the silver flickers of fish. That was where Tony had found him back then, claiming he couldn’t sleep either. He didn’t sleep enough. Hadn’t.

Steve curled up on his side, the bed too wide with just him in it. He was exhausted, but he didn’t really want to fall asleep, didn’t want to wake up and know again that Tony was gone.

But he couldn’t avoid sleep forever, not when he had a crew to be responsible for. He turned over again, feeling weighed down, tired and utterly awake.

But the ship hummed around him, a sense of movement and sound at the edge of perception, and the bed was more comfortable than it had any right to be.

Steve fell asleep within seconds.

*

Steve woke up when he felt a pair of lips trailing a path from the back of his neck down the slope of his shoulder.

“Good morning, handsome.”

There was the warm breath and tickling of beard against bare skin, so familiar it took him a couple of seconds before he realized.

Tony was dead.  

The intruder didn’t struggle as Steve flipped him over and pinned him to the bed, wrists in a vice-like grip and knees tight on each side of the man’s hips; a painful reminder of more playful times in the same bed.

A nauseating sense of vertigo struck him at the sight of the intruder’s face. For a moment, Steve couldn’t breathe. When his lungs filled with oxygen again he felt rage welling up with it, a white heat cutting through the dullness of sorrow.

“Yeah, I really should’ve seen that coming.”

Tony looked back up at him, seemingly at complete ease in the restrained position but for the wry and self-deprecating smile. Steve unwittingly tightened his grip.

“Identify yourself and state your intentions.”

For a moment it looked like Tony was going to protest, but he ultimately put on a resigned expression and sighed. It was a very Tony-like expression, enough to warrant an aching pain in Steve’s chest at the sight, but he knew better than to let up.

There was more than one species of shape shifters in the universe.

“Anthony Edward Stark, ID number 113074. Chief engineer aboard the Avenger vessel 3.5. Status report: less dead than official ship records would have you believe.”

Over the rage that made him tighten his hold enough to nearly fracture bone, Steve’s mind still worked with frightening clarity. If the stranger who had somehow bypassed the security code (Tony would have been pissed about that) openly acknowledged the fact that the person it was impersonating was out of commission (dead, he’s dead Steve), chances were it either didn’t care about being discovered – at least not by Steve, which didn’t bode well – or that it was toying with him.

Or it could be Tony. He wasn’t sure he dared consider that yet.

He looked at the body pinned down under him. The way the fluorescent light caught in his hair, Steve’s reflection in the intelligent blue eyes framed by long and thick lashes—a likeness that made every bone in his body ache with longing and shake with anger.

“No games,” he growled instead. “State your intentions.”

The intruder wasn’t smiling now but hadn’t struggled since Steve incapacitated him either. He was wearing the usual red and gold Tony had preferred for as long as Steve could remember and didn’t seem to be armed.

“I want you to let me explain. You don’t have to let go of me if it makes you feel better, but I want—I _need_ you to let me explain what’s going on, okay?”

Steve stared at him for a couple of moments without softening his grip. There was a gun on the nightstand; Tony had used to complain about it from time to time, claiming that it was redundant with the state-of-the-art security system he’d installed, and Steve quickly switched the grip on the intruder’s wrists to one hand as he reached for it.

Usually, Steve wouldn’t have bothered as he was more than capable of handling anyone in close combat, but with a shape shifter the odds could change in an instant. Another surge of adrenaline spiked his senses even further as the stranger with his lover’s face flexed his fingers.

Despite that, the hands still rested on each side of his head; the intruder wasn’t quite relaxed, but passive. For now.

“Anthony Stark is dead,” Steve said coldly. “I saw it.”

“I’m not, Steve. That wasn’t my body back there. Or rather, it wasn’t my only body.”

Steve almost laughed, because that would’ve been perfect, wouldn’t it? Tony wasn’t gone, not really; he’d simply transferred his personality and memories to a robotic copy of himself. If anyone could’ve done it, it would’ve been Tony.

 He had been nothing short of a genius, too good to be a simple engineer on a ship like theirs; Steve had seen him program AIs more than once and put together robotic limbs with little more than a screwdriver, but not even Tony would’ve been good enough to create a perfect copy of a living human being. Steve would’ve noticed.

More importantly, Tony would’ve told him about it. Right?

“Listen to me, Steve,” the intruder said before Steve was able to tell him to stuff it; Steve didn’t like hearing it say his name, not while looking like that.

“I know you don’t believe me. You have no reason to and I’m… sorry.”

And that, that hurt more than anything, hearing the sincerity in Tony’s voice and knowing it was fake.

“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t shoot you first and ask questions later.”

The thing wearing Toy’s face snorted lightly, which would’ve surprised Steve under other circumstances.

“Do you honestly think anyone else could hack my security system?”

Steve stared at the blue eyes, and then let got and sat back, his eyes closed. The bed shifted as the other man sat up, slowly, but there was no attack.

“You believe me?” he asked tentatively.

Steve breathed out slowly, opened his eyes.

“You’re not dead.” He stated, and Tony smiled at him.

“No,” he said. “I’m sorry I took so long getting back, it took some time to calibrate, and Don… I’ve sworn him not to tell anyone—”

“Don knew?” Steve interrupted him, incredulous. “Don knew and I didn’t?”

Tony winced, and opened his mouth to say something, but Steve spoke over him, hearing his voice rising but unable to stop it.

“Don knew _what_ exactly? That what got destroyed out there was a robot… Tony, I was with you right before you went out, you can’t claim that wasn’t you!”

They’d kissed, there in front of the air lock, and Tony had been laughing and telling him it’d be a piece of cake, that he’d been looking forward to testing some new function in his suit.

Tony looked defensive now, if it was him.

“Yes but… uh, like I said, I have spares? You can page Don and ask, if you want.”

Right. He should have thought of that right away.

“Don, there’s someone here claiming to be Tony,” he said as soon as the doctor answered, gaze fastened on the maybe-Tony, his muscles still tense and ready to raise the gun if he had to.

“Ah, yeah,” Don replied, his voice apologetic.

“It’s him?” Steve asked flatly, wondering if he should pinch himself. Maybe all of this was some kind of convoluted nightmare.

“Yes,” Don replied. “There are records to prove it if you want to see them. And Steve, I’m sorry for not telling you before, but I’d promised him…”

“Ok,” Steve replied harshly, anger mixing with the relief that Tony wasn’t gone after all. Except apparently Steve didn’t know him nearly as well as he’d thought.

“Steve?” Don asked in his ear, and he started.

“Captain out,” Steve replied, falling on protocol that they seldom used, whatever Don was saying cut off as he closed the channel.

He couldn’t think of him now, not with Tony there, still looking at him with his best kicked puppy look.

He couldn’t decide if he wanted to hit him or kiss him, so he did neither.

“Explain,” he said instead.

Tony sat back on his heels, taking a deep breath. His gaze scanned at the bedspread, before rising to meet Steve’s again, resolved.

“I’m… I’m not human, Steve. I never have been.”

Steve frowned.

“So? Neither is Carol, not fully anyway, or…”

Tony shook his head, his voice quiet as he continued.

“I’m not just an alien Steve, I’m not humanoid. I need a special environment to survive for longer periods of time. And communication is… complicated,” he pulled a hand through his hair, a familiar gesture.  

“That’s why I made my first humanoid constructs, to better interact with this world. And then it became home, more so than my home planet ever was. Long before I met the others, or you.” 

Was that supposed to make him feel better, about Tony lying to him about everything.

“Who else knew?” Steve asked.

“Jarvis. And Don, since a time a got badly injured and he noticed… you weren’t here then, and I asked him not to tell you. I was going to, I swear.”

“Were you?” Steve asked coolly.

“Steve?” Tony asked. He was trying not to show it, but there was pain there, and in his eyes.

Last night, Steve had thought he’d never see him again.

The next moment, he had Tony in his arms, the warmth of him through the cloth of Tony’s shirt against Steve’s chest. After a long moment, he pulled back, cradled Tony’s face in his hands and took in his fill of it.

“I’m glad you’re not dead,” Steve said, his voice wavering, and Tony’s smile was equally shaky.

“I’m glad you don’t hate me. You don’t, right?”

Steve shook his head, wordless, and kissed him.

He didn’t know how he felt about any of it, really. Tony had lied to him, had kept him in the dark for years… but they’d have time to discuss it later.  Right now he just wanted to know for sure he was here now.

“Ah, Steve, we should… let the others know,” Tony mumbled in between kisses, but he didn’t stop either.

“Later,” Steve told him decisively, and Tony laughed breathlessly as Steve pulled him down on the bed.

“Later it is,” he purred, leaning down to bite at Steve’s neck, hard enough that Steve shuddered, and knew, for sure, that it was no dream.

*

“I think they took it quite well, all things considered.”

The earlier meeting had been obligatory for every member of the staff and crew, so the hallways were nearly empty as Steve and Tony made their way back towards the living quarters. Despite the commotion over Tony’s death and rebirth, the activity onboard had been low; no threat had been reported that needed their intervention.

Steve felt a hand on his and turned his head to find Tony, as handsome as the day they’d met, with a pleased grin on his face. While Steve couldn’t say he shared the merriment he couldn’t help but smile back.

“Well, you’ve always had a special affinity for machines,” he replied and chuckled when he felt an elbow prod at his ribs playfully.

“Apparently, I’m not ‘the weirdest shit that has gone down on this ship’ according to Clint. I’m not sure whether I should be offended or relieved.”

“I think you might want to be a bit concerned, actually.”

Tony just laughed and leaned in for a kiss. Steve obliged, and for a moment it was like nothing had changed between them at all.

He knew that Tony would like to pretend that nothing _had_ changed between them.

 If he was honest with himself Steve would admit that he shared that sentiment, but unlike Tony he’d gained a completely new perspective on their relationship.

It wasn’t that Steve wasn’t happy. It was just hard to accept Tony had kept such an essential fact from him all these years. For, as far as Steve could tell, no good reason. The lack of trust that spoke for…

Tony glanced at him, a tentative look on his face as if he wanted to say something. Then he paused with a familiar expression of distraction, probably called upon by someone on the intercom.

He listened to whoever it was intently, and then made a hissing noise, his face scrunching up. “What colour are the sparks?” Tony asked, and whatever the answer was it seemed to relieve him. “Ok, then it’s not about to explode imminently, probably. I’ll come over and help out just in case, see you in a tic.”

Tony grinned apologetically at Steve.

“Peter needs some help with the secondary engine repairs. See you later?”

Steve watched him walk away, smiling despite himself. Everything did feel just like always, in that moment at least.

*

Steve was reading when Tony entered the room, back from changing some fuselage in the thrusters, presumable after he’d sorted the engine problem.

“I’m gone for less than 24 hours and when I come back the ship needs repairs in at least three different places; I think not dying is a humanitarian effort on my part,” Tony quipped, and then proceeded to strip out of his usual red-and-gold uniform before getting into bed.

He leaned over to kiss Steve, gently at first and then with increasing urgency.

“Hey,” Tony said, tongue painting a wet trail from shoulder to ear, ending with a quick scrape of teeth against Steve’s earlobe that made him shiver involuntarily. “You’re unusually quiet tonight.”

Steve turned around and placed a hand on the other man’s cheek, stroking the edge of his goatee. Tony looked momentarily surprised before he smiled and leaned into Steve’s touch with what would be obvious contentment if you didn’t know better.

This probably would’ve been a lot easier if Tony had been nothing more than an android.

“You don’t feel it, do you?”

The smile dimmed.

“Feel what?“ Tony asked, sitting back and suddenly apprehensive.

“This. You don’t _feel_ it, do you?”

Tony stared at him, incredulous.

“Of course I do! Why would I even--” he shook his head. “Steve, if it bothers you that my… that this body isn’t the only one I have, we don’t have to do anything.”

He looked defensive now, and slightly hurt.

“Don’t,” Steve interrupted. “That’s not what I meant. I just… I think we need to talk.”

It hadn’t made sense at first; Steve had known both Vision and Wanda after all, and Tony would know he didn’t have a problem with human-android or interspecies relationships. If Tony was just an AI, they would’ve been able to talk about that and resume their old relationship.

But Tony wasn’t, which made it more complicated than that.

“Why?” Tony asked, but it was rather obvious he was preparing to withdraw.

“Because I love you,” Steve replied. “And I want you to be honest with me. You didn’t tell me a vital fact about yourself and because of that I thought you were _dead_ , Tony. I need to understand why you thought you--”

 _Could do something like that to me_ , he resolutely didn’t say. “--Couldn’t tell me something that important.”

It had been a source of conflict between before that Tony firmly believed that sometimes, people were better off not knowing things that could cause them pain or make them worry.

Still, Steve had to admit he was a bit surprised when he’d finished speaking and Tony laughed at him.

“Steve, I told you I’m not—I’m not _human_. Not even remotely humanoid. Doesn’t that say everything?”

“No,” he replied sternly. “It doesn’t. But I’d like to hear you explain it. From the beginning,” he added.

Tony stared at him for a moment before he sighed and fell back against the pillows in resignation. Not for the first time since finding out the truth, Steve was struck by how natural every movement, expression and change of tone was; it wasn’t hard to see how Tony had managed to fool everyone except Dr. Blake.

And even he only found out by accident, or so Tony claimed; Tony was still good enough to imitate breathing, a pulse, and a variety of other bodily functions.

It was the kind of ingenuity that had given birth to Steve’s admiration for the engineer those first months out of stasis. But right now he struggled to understand how he thought, why he hadn’t thought he couldn’t just tell Steve about this.

Tony seemed to be gathering his thoughts as he frowned and stared at a spot on the opposite wall. Steve wasn’t going to push him. Not right now anyway.

“They build things, my species,” he said at last. “Anything. There are stories about them on the planets near our point of origin; celestial engineers, mythical creatures. It’s not so far from the truth, perhaps. But most are also... secluded, uninterested in the universe outside their own planet. Or anything outside of themselves.”

Tony smiled, his eyes distant.

“I was curious, I did want to know, so I sought out the few outsiders that came to our planet, helped them with things… and then I got caught by slavers, of all foolish things,” he said with a strained chuckle. “Still not sure if they had a commission or just saw the chance and took it. Either way, I met this man in captivity, Ho Yinsen. He was a scientist too, a human. We tried to escape together, that’s how I made my first humanoid construct. Tried to fool the slavers…” he shook his head, gaze distant. “Not good enough, and Yinsen paid the price.”

He sighed, turning towards Steve with a rueful smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

“I think, perhaps, at first I kept this form as my avatar as an honour of sorts. He was a good man.”

Steve wanted to ask more about Tony’s home planet, his species, but instead he nodded. It didn’t seem right, after Tony had just shared something that still clearly pained him.

 Another quiet pause as Tony stretched an arm out, fingers splayed towards the dim fluorescent light in the ceiling.

“This body was a tool then, first and foremost. A way to reach far corners and work out details in a construction. But that wasn’t all it was. My species is telepathic, there are receivers and psychic amplifiers in the body that—anyway,” he cut himself off and stopped the gesticulating that usually accompanied his lectures.

“I realized pretty quickly that you learn the most by exchanging information, and all species are more inclined to interact with creatures that look like them.”

Steve nodded; it was true, whether you liked it or not. The more humanoid a species, the more likely humans were to be willing to enter trade agreements and other interspecies interaction; this was a proven fact. Unfortunately.

“There’s an old Earth proverb for that,” he said with a wry smile. “’Birds of a feather flock together.’”

“We don’t have birds where I come from,” Tony replied good-naturedly. “But it’s true no matter where in the universe you happen to be. The basics were pretty simple; fashion a body, pick a name, study certain behavioural patterns, expressions and vocal intonations… Took a lot of work and a lot of trial and error, but I got better every time. By the time I met the rest of the team for the first time no one could tell.”

“It was a practical asset at first, then,” Steve said as he rolled over and rested his head in the crook between Tony’s neck and shoulder. He told himself it was for Tony’s comfort, to show that this wasn’t some kind of interrogation. If he sighed with content when Tony ran his fingers through Steve’s hair to gently scratch the back of his neck, well…

“Yeah; I wanted to learn. I didn’t know how emotionally gratifying it would be when I began. And if it hadn’t been, I guess I wouldn’t have gone out of my way to make the updated versions as realistic as I did. I wouldn’t have cared about whether people would want to interact with me.”

A far-away look fell over his lover’s face again, so human it was hard to reconcile it with the fact that Tony’s real body was somewhere else on the ship entirely.

It had to be onboard or he wouldn’t be able to control the human substitute no matter how many amplifiers he’d installed. And he doubted Tony would let anyone see him if he’d gone to such extreme measures not to be discovered to begin with; there was always someone of the crew up at every hour.

Patrolling, checking security measures, late snacks and, on one memorable occasion, an upside-down ball game in the ceiling: Steve had walked in on a wide variety of scenarios at hours he by all means should’ve spent in bed, if his sleeping schedule was to be obeyed. He doubted Tony had been able to take a stroll on deck in a long time.

If he even could? Hadn’t he said he needed a special environment?

And did he even walk? Steve realized he didn’t even know that much. Maybe he flew, for all he knew. Tony had created the fake body because his own wasn’t humanoid enough, but what did that mean exactly?

And what was it like to interact with the entire world around you through a machine?

“I want to see you,” Steve said and immediately knew it was the wrong thing to say.

Tony went rigid underneath him in a way that didn’t make it hard at all to imagine metal and wires buried underneath artificial flesh. Steve couldn’t see his face, but the hand that had been stroking his hair stilled.

When Tony spoke again it was with feigned indifference.

“You’re looking at me right now sweetheart,” warm lips pressed against his temple to underline the point. “And it’ll take a lot more than a laser through the stomach to get rid of me. Promise.”

There was a part of Steve that wanted to be satisfied with that, to happily lean against the other man’s very human shoulder and slip into sleep in his lover’s arms. Steve was tired with the kind of bone-deep, emotional exhaustion no biological enhancements had been able to make him immune to, even after the hours he’d slept last night.

It was exhaustion from grief, revelation and sudden changes in a relationship he’d thought was as stable as any relationship with Tony Stark could be.

He could stop pursuing these issues at that moment, could try to get used to the idea of his lover being someone else. They might be able to move on from there and be happy. Some knots would never be undone, but wasn’t that the case in any relationship?

Steve didn’t want that. He wanted Tony, and for Tony to be able to trust him. Fully, with everything.

Slowly, he pulled Tony’s hand away as he rolled over to his side of the bed to put some distance between them.

“I’m sure you had your reason for keeping me in the dark about—“ something as important as your real identity “—this, but I want to understand _why_ ,” he said, decisively.

“Did it ever occur to you that this might not be about what _you_ want, Steve?” Tony snapped.

Steve had considered the possibility of Tony getting defensive, even the acid he could pour into his words when he did, but he hadn’t expected the angry sneer that accompanied it. Tony was much more likely to hide his true feelings behind a smile, whether it was pleasant or not.

“Because it’s not,” Tony continued. “It’s about choices I’ve made, the life I’ve made for myself and this—just because you _know_ it doesn’t mean it changes anything, okay?”

“This isn’t about you _or_ me, it’s about _us_ , and I have a right to know the real—“

“ _This is the real me!_ ”

Tony’s voice was like steel when he spoke, hard and unforgiving, but there was something in his gestures, the tension of his muscles, all fake, but they’d revealed enough before, that made Steve think he almost seemed… threatened.

“This is me,” he repeated. “This body, on this vessel, with my friends. With _you_. There’s nothing more real than that.”

He deflated slightly, as if suddenly overcome with exhaustion.

“I’m sorry, Steve. I really am. I didn’t mean for this to happen—“

“You didn’t mean to die, or you didn’t mean for me to find out?” Steve asked, voice laced with a bitterness he couldn’t fight.

“Both,” Tony said curtly, and that hurt worse than anything; that Tony didn’t trust Steve to love him enough despite whatever he was. It was a direct dismissal that put new fuel on the spark of anger that nestled beneath his ribs.

“You’ve never even touched me,” he said.

Tony’s wide eyes were the last thing Steve remembered seeing of him before he was gone, the door closing behind him.

The room bathed in an eerie blue light that seemed cold and unfamiliar suddenly; when Steve lay down and closed his eyes, he could still see the way it cast shadows over Tony’s back, the deepened lines of his spine and shoulder blades that made Steve’s fingers itch for a pencil.

He’d tasted those shoulders more than once, but that was a life away now.

*

Steve went to bed with a bitter taste at the back of his mouth and woke up with a hollow feeling in his chest.

To wake up alone was unusual, but not unheard of. To go to bed after a fight, however, was even more unusual; to fall asleep angry never did anyone good in Steve’s opinion and they had always tried to sort things out between them before going to bed.

By the time they had finished apologizing both were usually too sated to do anything but fall asleep. At least that’s what Steve had always assumed.

Maybe he’d just pretended to be tired, Steve thought.

H pressed the heels of his hands to his eyelids and groaned. A part of him had hoped right before he opened his eyes that Tony would’ve sneaked back into the room they shared while he slept, that he’d allow Steve to pepper kisses over his face and neck before they made their amends. 

Their relationship had never been easy, before or after they had actually become a couple. Tony had kept secrets, and Steve didn’t always tell him everything that was on his mind, but they had _known_ each other.

He understood, objectively, why Tony had kept it a secret. Many people were prejudiced and would treat a non-humanoid being differently, whether they were actually aware of it or not; you needed to have everyone’s trust on a team for each member to be able to cooperate, and for the Avengers cooperation was vital.

But Steve didn’t understand why he’d kept it a secret from _him_. They’d been together for three years and yet Tony hadn’t told him. He said he would have but…

Steve sighed. Maybe he was being too harsh. He knew how Tony was with his secrets, like a dragon with a hoard.

Steve loved Tony. The shock his death had caused him was still present, a constant reminder of what could so easily have been taken from him if Tony had been who he’d made himself out to be for all these years. They fought, sure, but they loved each other too.

He refused to believe that would change, no matter what Tony really was.

The floor was cool under his bare feet as Steve stepped out of bed and braced himself for the confrontation that was sure to be inevitable.

*

The usual first impression people got of Tony Stark was that he was an open individual. Whether he came off as charming or a complete ass, people would expect him to speak his mind.

Steve had found that in a way, it was true; Tony could be flippant and outright insensitive when it came to other people’s emotions. But at the same time, his exterior was carefully crafted. Tony knew what could be hidden by a smile better than anyone else Steve knew.

Tony also knew that Steve knew him too well by now to fall for it. When Steve entered the bridge, he approached him wearing a mask of professionalism.

“Nothing to report Captain,” he said, spine rigid and shoulders straight. “Medical ward reported some problems with the oxygen substitution; a turbine on the lower deck is in need of maintenance as well, but neither are serious inconveniences, nor will they require a heavy amount of work to repair.”

Steve stared at him for a moment before he considered their location. He couldn’t bring up last night in case the conversation would become an argument again. The hierarchy of the Avengers vessel was not exactly strict, the organization being classified as a private endeavour, so Steve’s status as a captain was mostly out of convenience but causing a scene would still attract unwanted attention. No crew gossiped like the Avengers.

“You know what measures would be the most appropriate, Tony. If you don’t mind, I’d like to speak with you as soon as possible—“

“Understood. I’ll prepare to make the repairs at once, as that’d be the most time efficient.”

Steve sighed internally. So much for not causing a scene.

“Tony—“

“We’ll talk, Steve,” he replied, a little less stern this time, which was a small comfort. “But I have a job to do. See you around.”

Steve watched the doors slide open and Tony walk down the chrome hallway before taking a seat and beginning to check the messages they’d received in the last six hours that hadn’t been classified as emergency distress calls.

He resolutely did not turn his head to see the looks on his team mates’ faces.

*

Tony approached him in the cafeteria for lunch. The first thing Steve noticed was that there was no plate in front of him, which was more jarring than it should have been when he realized why.

“You’re not going to eat?” he asked as Tony sat down on the other side of the table, despite already knowing the answer.

“I don’t have to pretend to anymore, do I? Not that disposing of organic material is a great effort, so if you’d prefer me to keep up appearances…”

“No,” Steve said hurriedly. “It’s just going to take a while to get used to, I think.”

He smiled; Tony smiled back, but it was weak and half-hearted. Steve knew it was his imagination, but he thought Tony looked tired. He had his hands folded in his lap, head tilted slightly downwards and there was something in his eyes that simply made him look exhausted. Or perhaps resigned.

“You wanted to talk about last night,” he said; not a question, but a statement of fact.

“Yesterday was… Look, I’m not happy about this, okay? I’m not happy about you having kept me in the dark for so long—“

Tony opened his mouth; Steve raised his hand to stave off the oncoming protest. They weren’t always the best at listening to each other and even worse at talking, but this was something that needed to be said.

“—Even though I can see your reasoning behind it. But now that it’s out there, I need you to be completely honest with me or we won’t be able to work through this.”

“’This?’ What’s ‘this’, Steve?” Tony said. “I’ve told you all there is to say. My decision hurt you, and I’m sorry about that, but you should never have found out about it in the first place. We both would’ve been better off if that had been the case.”

Ah, so much for ‘I meant to tell you, Steve.’

Steve resisted the urge to close his eyes and tried to loosen his grip on the fork. Dedication was something Steve could admire, especially to causes he found admirable, but Tony’s stubbornness could rival his own when they found each other at cross purposes.

Usually, those arguments ended in some kind of truce, because nothing could make Steve budge once he’d set his mind on something and Tony was likewise unlikely to back down simply because someone’s opinion differed from his.

They’d once spent two days in orbit around an asteroid because Tony refused to interfere with the domestic politics of a nearby colony and Steve couldn’t hijack the ship as long as Tony was on it.

In the end, they’d held a vote and went down to the surface anyway, but Steve had held no illusions that Tony wouldn’t have been willing to wait for two entire weeks if necessary.

In the end they were Avengers, and neither of them could stand by when they could be helping.

Steve tried to distract himself with those memories as he resolutely didn’t let the thread of frustrated anger in his chest grow.

“’This’ is the fact that you’ve lied to me for more than a decade, Tony. ‘This’ is the fact that you’ve made an effort to try to keep me in the dark despite the fact that we’ve been romantically involved for three years.”

He shouldn’t have felt relief when Tony looked away, but it was a sign of remorse at least. Tony had obviously been sincere in his apologies. Not that Steve had thought he wasn’t sorry for the damage he’d inflicted; he’d just been uncertain whether he blamed himself for keeping his lover in the dark or for slipping up and revealing himself.

The latter was a considerably more unappealing alternative, but to be honest nothing he didn’t think Tony to be capable of.

 “I know you think you did the right thing,” Steve continued. “But it’s not your decision to make now when there’s no secret to hide anymore.”

“Of course it’s my decision!” Tony sneered and hunched over the table; the mess hall was relatively empty, but some of their friends were starting to glance over their shoulders now.

Steve could only imagine what they’d been saying about him and Tony since Tony came back from the dead; he knew they were only concerned, but he still had an irrational urge to turn around and glare at them.

“Why? What are you afraid of?” Steve asked when the silence had been stretched to its breaking point. He leaned back, overcome with the sudden emotional exhaustion that had seemed to plague him so often in the last few days. He didn’t want anything more than to be happy, really.

“I love you,” he added when Tony didn’t immediately reply and only succeeded in making the other man’s face take on a pained expression.

“I know,” Tony replied. “And there’s your ‘why’, I suppose.”

The world seemed to shrink a little at those words, become small enough to encompass his lungs and heart and ribs as Steve let the meaning of what Tony had just told him sink in.

“Then there’s nothing I can say to that, is there?”

This time, it was Steve who walked out and left Tony behind.

He idly wondered what Tony saw when he looked at Steve’s shrinking back, if he was even looking at all.

*

“I don’t want it to end like this.”

Tony’s breath was warm against his skin where they laid, Tony spooned around Steve in a way that would almost have been comical; they were almost equal in height, but Steve had much more mass and broader shoulders. When Tony embraced him like this, he’d got into the habit of slinging a leg over Steve’s hips just for good measure.

Tonight wasn’t like that. Instead of the weight of his lover’s limbs Steve felt Tony’s palms pressed against his back, fingertips just below the shoulder blades.

Steve’s mind was fuzzy from sleep, but those words still felt like cold water dripping down his spine.

“It’s not the end,” was all he could bring himself to say; a feeble protest, he should’ve turned around and taken Tony in his arms, told him everything he felt, but Tony rested his forehead against Steve’s neck and maybe it was easier for him like this.

Dark and silent but for the slight hum in the walls, a small but constant reminder that their life played out on a tiny vessel that Tony had made, drifting in the endless vastness of space.

Suddenly, Steve wondered how far Tony had travelled before he’d put the Avenger together, before he’d met the team that Steve would be the first real addition to, and whether it was comparable to the decades Steve had spent in cryogenic stasis.

There had been a million things working against them lying here now, he realized.

It was both ironic and appropriate that the biggest obstacle in their relationship so far hadn’t been alien hostility or the uncharted dangers in new worlds, but rather their own hang-ups and secrets. Steve felt a small flare of defiance at that realization; he wasn’t going to let go of Tony without a fight, no matter what Tony seemed to believe.

“Steve, I’m…” Steve couldn’t see his face, but he felt Tony’s fingertips pressing into his lower back slightly. “This is how I’d like you to remember me. If we were to…”

“I know,” Steve said, and was surprised to find that he did.

When Steve woke up, Tony was gone again, but so was the bitter taste of anger at the back of Steve’s mouth.

*

They fell into a sort of rhythm from that point on; there was gravity between them born from years of longing and cooperation. Neither of them seemed capable to fight it, even when Steve tried to make some space for both of them.

The morning after Tony had sneaked into his room, Steve had decided that he should try not to think about it for a while. If he made it obvious he was there to stay and show his support, maybe Tony would finally be able to take that last step. Steve didn’t care how long he had to wait; he’d waited almost a century already, even if he hadn’t known it.

Sometimes they’d brush hands in the hallway or share a kiss when they thought no one was watching, but the smile on Tony’s lips grew thinner each time. When Steve sprained an ankle during a rescue mission Tony refused to leave his side, but some nights Steve would wake up and find the space next to him in bed where his lover should be empty.

 Tony was always somewhere else, whether in mind or in body.

Steve closed his eyes and gritted his teeth to calm the storm in his heart every time Tony avoided his gaze (too often lately). Because he was patient, and what they had was too good to lose.

*

Desperate times called for desperate measures, but when Steve walked into Jarvis’ kitchen almost two weeks later it was still with a deep sense of apprehension.

He didn’t fear of the older man’s reaction to Steve’s request, but the mere approach felt strangely like an invasion of privacy. Steve supposed it was; he was going to try to talk to Tony’s father figure about a topic that Tony had tried to conceal for years. Was still concealing, in fact.

Talking about it with someone else behind his back made Steve feel uncomfortable and like a hypocrite. But he had a right to know, didn’t he?

“Jarvis?”

Stepping inside Jarvis’ kitchen was always a bit of a shock; he could just as well have stepped through a wormhole, it seemed. While the rest of the ship was sleek and hypermodern, all curves and blue light, the kitchen was practically homely, in its angular design.

In fact, it looked very much like a kitchen he would’ve seen on earth back home when he was a kid, only bigger. Tiles on the floor and above the sink, with fresh products grown on the ship in the fridge.

“Yes, Steven?”

Steve smiled. When he first started dating Tony, having Jarvis’ good opinion had been important to him. When the man had started referring to him by his given name, Steve had taken it as a sign of silent approval.

Jarvis’ kitchen was very much unlike the real kitchen adjacent to the mess hall. The crew was too big to feed on the meals Jarvis could prepare alone, but he was still available here in his own private space. People came here at all hours, to get a snack or talk.

Steve had been convinced for a long time that the room had been installed more for Jarvis’ benefit than anyone else’s. Now when his relationship with Tony had been put in a new light, he supposed that made even more sense.

“Do you have a minute? I was hoping we could talk.”

“Ah,” Jarvis replied and Steve hoped he was imagining the dubious tone. “About Anthony, no doubt. You two haven’t been on the best of terms lately.”

Steve almost flinched; he’d hoped it wasn’t that obvious. Then again, how could anyone not notice.

“We’re not fighting,” he blurted out.

“Of course not,” Jarvis replied diplomatically. “Merely not on speaking terms. Well, where anyone else can see, as far as I’ve understood.”

Steve winced inwardly. So much for the other Avengers not noticing.

“And Anthony… well, he didn’t say it in so many words but I inferred from what he did say,” Jarvis added drily, his eyes searching the cabinet he’d opened for a coffee tin.

Of course Tony had already talked to Jarvis. The man was his mentor, his oldest friend, the one who had helped him adapt to human culture. The one who had helped him become Tony Stark, rather than whatever he’d been before that.

On second thought, ‘father figure’ probably wasn’t far off at all.

“Things have been a bit tense, yes. Since I found out. We had a couple of arguments and now it’s like I can’t get through to him anymore.”

They hadn’t exactly stopped talking. Neither had they stopped touching; signs of affection weren’t foreign to them yet. But everything they talked about seemed without substance when they were skirting around an issue they couldn’t seem to deal with.

“I see. And why exactly is that, do you think?”

There was an edge to Jarvis’ tone; not aggressive or accusing, but still urging him to think carefully about his reply.

“We haven’t resolved the argument we started two weeks ago,” he admitted. “Since neither of us were willing to back down, I was hoping we could put it on ice for a while and deal with it reasonably.”

“And by dealing with it reasonably, do you mean both of you taking the other’s feelings into consideration, or him giving in to you?” Jarvis voice was still steady, but there was subtle steel in it, enough to make Steve pause.

He started to protest, but…

That was what he’d done, wasn’t it? He hadn’t really considered complying with Tony’s wish as an option. It should’ve made him feel inconsiderate, but there wasn’t any way their relationship was going to work if Tony wasn’t willing to take that step.

“A relationship has to be built on mutual trust. I can’t be in a relationship with someone who doesn’t trust me enough to tell me something as important as—as their true identity.”

Jarvis nodded while measuring coffee bean into the machine that would soon begin the process of grinding and then making the drink. It was a strangely calming motion.

“You have a point, of course. But is that all there is to it?”

The question took Steve somewhat off-guard. What else could it be about it?

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, Steven, does Tony’s decision bother you because you feel it undermines your relationship, or is it because you feel personally offended by it?”

The words stunned Steve silent.

“I don’t believe you have anything less than pure intentions,” Jarvis added after a moment. “But he _has_ already told you about himself and where he comes from. He has entrusted you with command of his ship, one of the dearest things to him in the entire universe. Now, it might be best for both of you to let sleeping dogs lie, wouldn’t it?”

Steve wouldn’t have considered it if it had come from anyone but Jarvis. But now it _had_ , and he had no choice but to try to evaluate the question.

There was something appealing about the idea, admittedly. To back off and pretend that nothing had really happened. He had considered this already, when he’d wondered whether they would be able to repair their relationship right after Tony had come back and found that yes, they could.

But it wouldn’t be anything like what they’d had before, would it?

“Maybe,” he admitted. “It would be the easiest. But I’d spend the rest of my life knowing that Tony didn’t trust me enough to think that our relationship would survive… Well, _Tony_. And I’m not sure how long our relationship would last in that case either way.”

Jarvis stopped moving his hands for a moment and turned fully around to face Steve. Steve got the strange and slightly unnerving impression that he was being evaluated.

And, apparently, that he had passed some kind of test, as Jarvis turned back to the kitchen counter.

“You should know—“ he began. “—although I don’t doubt he has told you this himself already, but still. You should know that he loves you, Steven. And the reason he hides is not because he doesn’t trust you, but because he’s afraid.”

“Afraid that I’ll leave?”

It sounded much like the same thing, to Steve. He tried not to feel bitter that Jarvis had confirmed his suspicions.

“It might sound like there’s no difference between distrust and fear, but… Imagine his situation for a moment. You seem very sure that you wouldn’t want to leave him.”

“I love him,” Steve replied. It was as simple as that.

“And that’s why you should respect his wishes until he’s ready to accept that,” he said, and there was a stern note in those words that soon softened: “With all due respect, you don’t have as much to lose as he does.”

Steve opened his mouth to protest but stopped when he realized what would’ve come out of his mouth. He liked and trusted Jarvis, but some things were hard to say out loud at all.

Where had he been before the Avengers had found him, on some barely functioning battle station that had drifted out of orbit decades and light-years away from what had been his home once? A soldier frozen in a perpetual intergalactic war, drifting between planets and stars like the relic he was. They’d taken him in, given him guidance and purpose in a time and place that was not his own and eventually they’d been welded together, slowly but surely.

Steve had found home again. And he wouldn’t have had it without all of them, but not the least without Tony.

“I wouldn’t have much to lose if it wasn’t for him,” he settled on instead, “For any of them.”

He felt a warm hand on his shoulder. When he turned, Jarvis was smiling at him.

“So don’t drive him away. At this rate he’ll think you’re proving him right by distancing yourself.”

“I’d never-“

“Of course you wouldn’t. But he doesn’t know that. Or at least, is beginning to doubt it, I think. You know what he’s like, Steven.”

Steve winced and hoped Jarvis was exaggerating, speaking from intuition rather than something Tony had said; but then again Jarvis’ intuition seemed to be as keen as anything he knew for a fact. The possibility that Tony’s faith in him, in the two of them, had been so deeply shaken was something he hadn’t quite been capable of considering.

He should have, he thought guiltily.

“I see. Thank you, Jarvis.”

He stretched before making his move towards the door when Jarvis coughed politely.

“Steven?”

“Yes, Jarvis?”

“I believe you might have had something you wanted to ask me?”

When he’d first stepped inside the kitchen, yes, but Steve believed the conversation they’d had had been illuminating enough.

“No, not anymore. And thank you,” he added with a wave over his shoulder, “for everything.”

“You’re welcome, Captain.”

Steve moved swiftly over the floor back to his duty post on deck. He shouldn’t even have considered turning to an outside party for an answer to these questions, he realized now.

And maybe… he hadn’t really listened to Tony either, not properly. As much as he hated to admit it, it wouldn’t be the first time.

*

The thing he feared the most was that Tony might be right about him.

Not because it’d make him unreliable or superficial, someone unable to look past outer appearances. But if Tony would turn out to be right, that’d mean their relationship would fall apart and it’d be on Steve’s shoulders; Tony had made it obvious physical appearances, or even physical proximity in a relationship, was unimportant to him, by the very nature of his existence.

Worse than losing what they had would be losing it and knowing it was because of Steve.

Only the dull sound of his footsteps could be heard through the dimly lit corridor leading back to their quarters; or maybe no other sounds could penetrate Steve’s contemplations. Sooner or later, he though, one of them had to give in or there’d be nothing left to salvage.

For the first time, Steve wondered if it’d have to be him. Sure, he rebelled against the very thought of simply accepting the betrayal and lack of trust from Tony, but after his conversation with Jarvis yesterday he’d started to consider what would happen if neither of them stepped down from the silent argument.

As far as Tony was concerned, their entire history together was built on a lie; if it had not been it would never have existed in the first place. And by that definition everything he knew about Steve’s feelings for him had been rendered invalid.

Steve just had to show him that nothing had changed. The problem was that it had, and it was too late for him to correct that mistake.

He’d been too upset to see the situation from Tony’s point of view. Not that he was _wrong_ , Steve still stood by that his opinion was the right one; sooner or later Tony would have to put down the disguise for him. But he should’ve shown Tony that nothing had changed in what he felt for Tony.

He was half surprised to find Tony already in the room as the door opened. When had that become unusual in his mind, Steve wondered with a pang, and that, quite suddenly, steeled a resolve in him. Losing Tony was not an option, not if he could do something about it.

Even if it meant making a compromise on what he wanted from him.

Tony looked solemn, sitting on Steve’s cot, his arms resting over his crossed legs, the circuit he’d been tinkering with on the bed in front of him.

“Steve I’ve—“ he began to say, even as Steve opened his mouth to speak. “--been thinking.” Tony finished, raising his eyebrows questioningly.

Steve shook his head wryly, coming closer to sit on the edge of the bed himself.

“Me too,” he replied quietly. He laid a hand on Tony’s shoulder, thumb rubbing lightly over his pulse point, and after a moment’s hesitation Tony leaned into it. Steve tried not to wonder whose benefit that was for.

Be that as it may, he drew away after a moment, turning to look at Steve with a tired, almost resigned expression. It chilled Steve, that he’d let things get bad enough for Tony to look that defeated.

“I know you,” Tony said, a smile hovering on his lips but not quite reaching his eyes. “You won’t ever let go of something if you think it’s important enough. And I…” he faltered and drew a deep breath, shook his head almost angrily. “If I’m going to lose you anyway, it might just as well be from—“

“You don’t have to do it,” Steve hadn’t planned to say it, but he couldn’t bear it anymore. Not when each word Tony said seemed torn from him.

“Really, Steve,” Tony asked somewhat dubiously, his tone sharp. “ _Now_ you decide you don’t want to know?”

“I can’t force you.” Steve replied, the truth of it, the _meaning_ of it coming to him as he spoke, almost as a revelation. Or like something he’d known but refused to accept. “It wouldn’t be right. It’s up to you to decide what you feel ready to give, and when. If ever.”

Tony was quiet; they both were, before Steve added, in the same quiet tone as before.

“I don’t know how I’ll get used to it. Or how well. But the thing is… Tony, I’m willing to try.”

Tony was looking at him, his gaze challenging.

“Are you?” he asked.

Steve didn’t like to think of himself as someone who’d back away from a challenge.

“Yes,” he replied.

*

Things got slightly less strained after that. Not perfect, at times one of them would forget and then falter suddenly. Sometimes they both did.

But they sat together at the cafeteria, when they had the opportunity to do so, separate and with other members of the crew. Steve noticed the discreet glances between him and Tony, silent gauges of whether extra company would be welcome, and realized just how much the others must have worried. How much they had been walking on eggshells around them them before.

How had he not noticed at the time?

The first time someone made a joke about him and Tony, he became aware that had been noticeably absent for a while as well. And when Tony met his gaze ruefully, he realized he must have realized it too.

They talked of everyday things, at first haltingly before it became normal again. Tony complained about the crew misusing his ship, leaving dents or trying to fix small problems or jury-rig their own solutions and screwing up the circuitry, and Steve would point out Tony loved the excuse to redo things to make them more complicated (“ _Better_ , Steve, the word is better,”).

Steve had a hard time remembering not to tell Tony he needed to eat more often, knowing now as he did he really didn’t need to.

That didn’t stop him being perplexed when he realized Tony still drank coffee.

“It’s… a habit?” Tony replied when he asked. “Besides the taste has kind of grown on me.”

And oddly, it was that rather mundane piece of knowledge that made Steve feel less strange about tentatively reaching out to Tony that night in bed.

Tony certainly seemed pleased, Steve could feel the curl of his smile as they kissed, and when Tony’s kisses moved down along his neck, he didn’t stop him. His libido was telling him it had been far too long since he’d felt anything but his own hand.

Tony’s hands stroked down Steve’s ribs, searching out familiar paths. He leaned up, catching Steve’s gaze and then smirking at him knowingly. He licked his lips, and Steve shivered, his hips stuttered, and Tony laughed lowly.

“You want it, don’t you? My mouth on your cock, licking and sucking you down until you come.”

Steve could help the way his body arched, even though Tony was barely touching him, and he moaned aloud. He did want that, so badly.

When Tony’s lips closed around the head of his cock, already fully hard and leaking, Steve carded his fingers in his hair, trying his best not to pull at it.

“Tony, please,” he whispered hoarsely, and Tony hummed around him which made Steve buck and keen, his hand closing hard.

“Sorry,” he mumbled. “Can’t – won’t last,” he managed somehow, the words broken.

Tony pulled off him, his eyes wild and almost lost, and then he crawled up Steve’s body to kiss him desperately. He threw his leg over Steve’s and curled his arms around him, his hands wandering like he needed to touch him everywhere at once.

He let out a small frustrated sound, and then Steve reached between them and fumbled until he managed to line up their erections and could stroke them.

It didn’t last long after that, and the whole thing was, for them, very clumsy, and rather quick.

And lovely, as well.

After, they lay there panting, and Tony was still curled all around Steve.

“Should wash up,” Steve mumbled

 “Don’t want to,” was the sulky reply, and Steve chuckled.

“You’re gonna stick,” he said gently, and Tony mumbled something about that sounding excellent.

Truth be told, Steve didn’t want to move either. He felt more relaxed that he could recall having felt since he’d thought Tony had died.

Which suddenly reminded him exactly why they hadn’t done this since then. The thought hit him like a shower of cold water, and something must have signalled that to Tony, because he pulled away enough to give Steve a questioning look.

“What’s wrong?” he asked when Steve didn’t reply, brows pulling into a frown.

“I… Tony, did you really want that?”

“What?” Tony sat up suddenly, looking at him disbelievingly.

“I just… we don’t have to, you know that right? I can live without it,” Steve said, feeling sick and cold. How could he have just… forgotten that he didn’t know whether Tony was just going through the motions for him?

Tony looked at him searchingly for a moment, as if he was trying to understand, and then he shook his head, frowning.

“You think I don’t want it?” he asked bemusedly. “Really, Steve? Why?”

“Well, you… your body is remote controlled, isn’t it? Programmed to show whatever you want it to. How can I know what any of its reactions mean, really?” Steve protested.

Anger flared in Tony’s eyes at that.

“I’ve not been lying to you!” he yelled, and then seemed to realize what he’d said as he slapped a hand over his eyes. “Except, damned it, I _have_. But Steve, not about that. Not about wanting you, in whatever way I can.”

 “You haven’t?” Steve said, and he must have sounded even more obviously relieved to Tony’s ears, because the last of the tension left him at those words. Instead, Tony sighed deeply and then flopped down on his side, looking at him sadly. He poked Steve in the side and shook his head.

“You don’t get it at all,” he said, sounding at once frustrated and like he did when he’d finally pinpointed the cause of a vexing problem.

“Then _explain_ ,” Steve replied, sharper than he’d intended. “How does it feel, for you, exactly? I mean, in comparison?”

“Comparison to what?” Tony asked, squinting at Steve.

“Just, you know, in comparison to your… uh, other body?”

That seemed to faze Tony a little.

 “You mean sex?” he asked, and Steve shrugged.

“Or just whatever you used to do to interact. Assuming you did?” he frowned a little, once again wondering just how different Tony’s species were. “Do you even have a sex drive?”

Tony was giving him a somewhat blank look.

“We… uh, yes, I do? As for the feelings, it’s different?” he said finally. “Different senses.” He looked at his hand, wriggling the fingers, and then glanced at Steve with a small frown. “I do _feel_ this body, you know. There’s a sensory feedback, as close as I could make it to what I assumed a human would.” he said softly, thoughtfully. “And I can feel some through the empathic senses as well. Not as much as I would directly, but some,” he ducked his head a little at the last, as if embarrassed, which was rare for him.

“You’re a telepath, right?” Steve asked, and Tony nodded in confirmation.

He smiled, his reassuring grin that he got when he was trying to pretend everything was fine, _nothing serious Steve, it’s just a slight inconvenience, really!_.

“So you see, it’s not like I’m some robot. And even if I were, it’d be worth it, just for your reactions”

 _That_ grin was familiar too.

“Oh,” Steve said, and reached out to take hold of his hand. This body was missing some of the calluses he’d learned to know, but it was still essentially the same. Tony’s fingers flexed in his hold, and then he laced them with Steve’s. His eyes were shaded, the blue darkened.

Steve felt a bit silly. He should have just asked, before. But they hadn’t been talking. Because he’d been unable to take no for an answer. Which, put like that…

“Ugh, Tony, I’m sorry,” he muttered, face hidden behind a hand. “I’ve been an asshole.”

Tony laughed, sounding pleasantly surprised.

By the time Steve could bear to look at him again, Tony was looking up at him from where he lay on the bed.

“Yeah,” he said, clear eyed and serious. “You are sometimes. But I knew that already.” His mouth quirked into a rueful smile. “Having you is worth it.”  

They were quiet for a while.

“Do you ever feel lonely?” Steve asked impulsively, into the quiet.

Tony went still, staring unseeingly down at the bedding.

“Not as much as you might think,” he said quietly. “My sort… we’re not exactly a social species. I did tell you we build things, didn’t I?”

Steve nodded. Tony had told him so little, he could hardly forget.

“You could almost say it’s a shell, of sorts. Even though there isn’t much on our planet to threaten us. Not anymore, leastways, there are stories that wasn’t always the case.  By the time I was born, the biggest threat was each other, and hardly that. Not social enough for war,” he said, lips quirking upwards. “We could communicate over distance, call to each other, but we didn’t often meet in the flesh. It’s wasn’t--,“ he hesitated, frowned with an inward turned expression as if considering some distant, unpleasant memory. “Necessary.”

Then he shrugged.

“Well, children will stay with their parent for a time. And there are some who choose to share,  sometimes for a longer time, though it’s rare.”

Steven raised an eyebrow at that.

“Not naturally monogamous, eh?” he said teasingly. “Should I be worried?”

Tony rolled his eyes at him. But there was something subtly sour in his expression, almost pained.

“Oh, hardly,” he said blandly. “I was always something of a deviant.”

It suddenly occurred to Steve that maybe this wasn’t just about the two of them. Had Tony let someone in, once, and they’d hurt him?

“You… ” he fumbled for words, and Tony shook his head with a rueful smile.

“I think sometimes I expected too much, that’s all. Like I said, devotion is a rare attribute among my people. We seek out others for a purpose; knowledge, skills, reproduction… and when the object is achieved, we part again.”

“It sounds like a lonely sort of life,” Steve commented.

Tony shrugged.

“It was all I’d known, before I left, I can’t say I longed for something else. Then again, I didn’t go back, either.”

Steven considered it.

“The ship,” he said slowly, after a moment. “Is it…”

“My shell?” Tony finished for him. “Yes, I suppose so.”

“And it doesn’t bother you, sharing it with so many people?”

Tony considered that.

“It took some getting used to,” he said slowly. “It was just Jarvis at first, of course, that helped. By now, I don’t think I could—,“ he halted, looking troubled, and then finished almost reluctantly. “I really have gotten used to having other people here. I’m not sure I could get used to being alone again. Besides, this body changed my perception of things too, I suppose,” he said, sounding almost bemused. “So you see, it’s far more than just some robotic arm, Steve, even a really good one,” he added, poking Steve in the ribs again, his smile crooked.

Steve pulled him close, and some of the tension melted out of Tony's body, as he relaxed against his side.

“This body feels differently. But that doesn't mean it's less,” Tony said, almost defiantly.

“I get that now,” Steve replied, apologetically, and quiet settled on them for another long moment. It felt easy now like it hadn't in a while. Cleansed.

Tony sighed, nuzzling at Steve's side.

“Will you stop avoiding me?” he asked, the words slightly muffled.

Steve felt another pang of guilt, but that was... well, what was done was done. Just like Tony not willingly telling him about not being what he appeared. And with his reaction, maybe they were even now. More or less.

“I haven't,” he couldn't help saying. “I just wasn't sure where the boundaries were.”

“You could have asked.”

“Because you always tell me the truth when I do, right,” Steve said, but fondly.

Their gazes met, and then both fell into helpless laughter.

Tony surged up to kiss him, still chuckling softly against Steve's mouth.

“You stubborn bastard,” he whispered between kisses, and Steve grinned.

“Pot, kettle,” he said affectionately.

Tony leaned back from him, mock-pouting, but then his expression grew more serious again. His arms, curled around Steve's shoulders, held him tighter.

“Will we be ok, do you think?” he asked.

Steve felt another pang, this one of sheer fondness.

“We're both stubborn bastards, we'll make it work. We've done it before,” Steve said.

*

Life went on, with missions and fights against their various enemies peppering the everyday life of spacefaring.

Steve stopped thinking about the fact that Tony’s body wasn’t the only one he had. In a way, it meant he was safer than he’d thought before. Maybe he wasn’t quite as reckless with his safety as Steve had occasionally thought after all.

Though he still wasn’t entirely convinced of that.

And then there was the fight at the moon Psyche X.

What seemed like a standard aid mission to a smallish terraforming colony turned out to be a trap laid by Doom, armed with long lost techno-magic tacked onto his ship.

It didn’t help that most of the crew with scientific skill was on the surface of the small moon, there to fix the problems the settlers had been having with their life support and agrarian systems.

And they couldn’t get back to ship while it was under attack.

Steve looked back from helping one last colonist into a shelter, and found Tony looking up at the sky, stars burning brightly behind the hulking dark shape of Doom’s ship, visible in the sky beyond the scratched dome above the colony’s housing.

He looked like he was calculating their chances and not happy about what he was coming up with.

The angular shape of the ship, the design familiar from previous battles with Doom, was obscured behind a latticework of new power shields.

The shields were a shifting hue of purple, black and sickly green, like a deep bruise, and somehow deeply unsettling to look at. Unlike a regular shield, they were covered in markings and patterns, ones that were as difficult to look at as the pulsing colours.

Another beam of green light shot out of Doom’s ship, scattering against the shields around the ship Avenger.

Tony frowned and closed his eyes, presumably focusing on the diagnostics he was getting from the ship.

“Doom doesn’t know what he’s playing with… ugh, magic.” he muttered, and then “Friday, what’s your situation?”

Suddenly, Friday’s voice came out of Tony’s headset, the girlish voice audible to Steve as well.

_“I’m fine! But there’s something weird about the readings from the ship, I think it’s—”_

Doom’s shields gave out a flash of what could only be described as unlight, the markings on them twisting around as if trying to escape, and Friday’s voice dissolved into a wordless scream of static.

“Friday!” Tony shouted.

 _“There’s a—”_ her voice cut off again, and Steve only caught bits of the following words. Tony had closed his eyes again, his mouth moving silently.

“Ah,” he said, and turned towards Steve. His eyes were a startling blue behind the clear visor of his suit, and he looked pained for a moment, before smiling. “Steve,” he said.

“Tony, what’s—” Steve began to say, and then Tony jerked, his whole body bending like a puppet with pulled strings, before falling down lifeless.

Steve caught him before he hit the ground, and Tony’s head fell back, his eyes still open but glassy, with nothing behind them.

“Tony!” Steve called out, but Tony didn’t react. He’s not breathing, Steve thought for an awful moment, before he remembered that didn’t mean anything… did it?

He looked up towards the two ships in the sky above the moon. Nothing seemed changed, their shields still shone around the Avenger like a net of silver, but something was…

He realized with a start all the lights had gone out.

“Hank! What’s going on with the ship?” Steve spoke into his communicator. Hank was on surface, but he had to be monitoring the feeds from the ship too, if not before than now.

Hank’s voice came out strained.

“The readings are really messed up, but I think it’s some kind of EMP pulse? I’m hardly getting any activity from the ship right now.”

_“Steve.”_

He looked down at Tony, before realizing the voice was coming from his communicator, with a slight electronic edge to it that meant Tony was using the ship’s voice synthetizators. Somehow, it was still all him, the tone soft and almost private in a way that told Steve this was probably a private channel.

He sounded apologetic.

 _“I’d advice the remaining crew to evacuate if I could,”_ he said.

That would require weakening the shields, already running on reserve, Steve knew that much. Not an option.

_“I’m working on something to restore the connections and take out Doom but… it’s kind of a 50/50 chance.”_

“Tony, what are you—” Steve began, only to be interrupted.

 _“I’ve got this Steve, trust me,”_ Tony said, sounding just as stubborn through the synthetizators as he ever did.

Steve breathed in sharply, his gloves tightening around the body he was still holding.

He tried to tell himself it would be fine, Tony had others… on the ship.

“Tony,” he repeated sharply. “What are you planning.”

_“There’s no time to explain. Steve, whatever happens, I love you.”_

The voice went quiet, and Steve cursed inwardly. Damn him!

The others on the surface ran out of the colony’s buildings, Hank at the foreground. He was staring up at the two ships, speaking in a low voice into his communicator.

Jan was up there, Steve thought, feeling sorry for Hank. Then he recalled so was Tony, the part of him that couldn’t be replaced. Could he even leave the ship if he needed to? Why had he never thought to ask that?

Right, because he’d been obsessing over his own hurt feelings. Damn it!

Hank knew the ship almost as well as Tony did, as a bio-engineer who’d worked together with him on it. He should have been up there now, helping him.

Steve should have told the others to take cover, but they all had friends and family still onboard. They had thought this was a mission to aid with failing technology, not a fight, so the surface team wasn’t even any standard configuration.

He felt more than saw Don kneel at his side, probably checking on Tony. Or rather, the body construct, and that was still an alien idea to Steve, despite everything.

Don sighed.

“That’s another one down,” he muttered, and Steve almost told him to shut up, had to bite his tongue to keep the words back.

It was the worst sort of battle, because there was nothing they could do. They hardly even knew what was going on, at that.

Steve tensed each time the awful shields around Doom’s ship changed colour or grew brighter, waiting for another beam or pulse from them.

They all cheered when the lights on the Avenger came on, and when Hank reported that Tony had broken into Doom’s system, but then everyone went quiet.

Steve found he was holding his breath, all the while aware that Tony was so quiet and still in his arms, not here anymore, but up on the ship, fighting.

Hank cursed when his connection to the ship was cut off for the last time, just some minutes later.

And then, all the eerie shields around Doom’s ship went bright all at once, in burning, sickening purple that shaded to black on the edges, and Steve could have sworn he heard something on the edge of his hearing, an awful whispering, until he had to look away.

He turned back right away but for a moment the after images blinded him, sparking in his vision against the dark of space. He couldn’t see either ship at first, his mouth going dry.

“Avenger, please comply,” Hank was saying, again and again like a broken record.

Where… there, against the stars, he could just make out a darker shape, The Avenger, but with the lights all gone out again.

There was no sign of Doom’s ship that Steve could see, and no activity, as they waited in tense silence and the minutes stretched on.

“I’m not getting a reply, Captain,” Hank said, voice wretched. Steve closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

Best case, they were simply sitting in space without power. There was no use thinking of the worst-case scenarios at this point.

“To the shuttle,” he said, keeping his voice even.

*

It felt like forever, despite only taking minutes to board the shuttle and reach the silent, lightless ship.

At least, with Hank on the out team, they had relatively little trouble getting in again despite the power being out. It still took him half-an-hour to get through manually and from the outside. Steve didn’t know what they would have done if Hank hadn’t been with them, and resolved to take that up with Tony later.

Assuming he wasn’t… no, not thinking about the worsts case scenarios, he reminded himself.

He was among the first standing in the air lock of the shuttle as the outer doors finally opened into darkness.

“There’s air,” Don commented, although they’d all gotten the same basic readings. “It seems to be leftover though, the life-support systems are down.”

“Keep your suits on,” Steve commanded, and got nods in reply. The suits could produce their own air supply.

The familiar hallway ahead was foreign in the dark, the only light coming from the bioluminescent patterns painted on the wall, forming lines and arrows towards the nearest escape pods and other essential signage.

It had been designed for a situation just like this, when all the lights went out. The markings were raised as well, just in case.

That was Tony all over, thinking of any eventuality. And yet, he somehow always managed to get into trouble, Steve thought, frustrated.

The ship looked eerily abandoned.

“Carol, Jessica, Clint, check the escape pods. Hank, Don, with me to the bridge” he ordered, and the two women peeled off in different directions.

They continued on along the hallway towards the bridge. Before they got very far, though, running footsteps approached them.

“Captain!” Peter called out, appearing out of the gloom, suited up like they were. Jan was just a few steps behind him.

“Peter, Jan,” Steve replied, “what’s the situation?”

Peter grimaced through his visor.

“I’m so glad to see you guys,” he said, and then hastened to continue: “Doom’s crazy spell circle shields put everything out, and then Wanda and Tony did… something. I was working on trying to keep our systems online long enough, didn’t get all the details, but I think they did something that turned Doom’s jerry-rigged system on him. He’s probably in another dimension now. But then Wanda collapsed, and we lost contact with Tony, and it might just be the blackout, but I don’t know—”

All through the explanation, Peter was gesturing expansively, as he did when he was nervous. Jan put a calming hand on his arm, before turning to the three of them.

“I think Don should check on Wanda,” she suggested, and Steve nodded along. “And Peter and Hank should see about getting the systems online as soon as possible.”

Then she turned to Steve, her expression serious.                                                        

“Steve, you should get Jarvis, he should know how to check on Tony.”

She frowned and muttered: “And later, I’m going to have words with him about no one else knowing where on the ship he damn well _is_ , it’s not safe.”

 Steve snorted despite himself.

“Oh yes,” he agreed, while wishing he’d thought to use that argument before.

“You are sure Doom is gone?” he asked one more time, and Peter shrugged. “As far as we can tell? Scott’s on the bridge keeping an eye out, though at this point if he does turn up…” he shrugged again.

“I see,” Steve replied resignedly.

“All the more reason to get the systems online as soon as possible,” Hank said, and he looked grim as well when Steve glanced his way.

“Yes,” he agreed.

Carol and Jessica found the rest of the crew in the escape pods, and he ordered Jessica to bring Jarvis to him to the bridge as soon as possible. Meanwhile, Hank and Peter were taking stock of the damage with Jan’s assistance.

They reported that it would take a while to get just the basic functions online.

Steve glanced at the starry expanse of space, empty except for the moon hanging huge at their side, just far enough that they weren’t caught in its orbit. 

He hoped Doom was gone, if not for good at least for a long while. Knowing him, he’d crawl out of whatever hellscape he’d ended up in sooner or later. Hopefully later.

“How is she?” he asked Don, who was inspecting Wanda, lying motionless in her brother’s arms. At least she was breathing.

“Unconscious,” Don said, frowning down at the readings in his medical equipment. “I can’t find anything physically wrong with her.”

“It’s the magic, isn’t it?” Pietro said grimly. “Even I could tell those spell circles Doom had were trouble. We need another magic user, this isn’t the first time this has happened,” he said, glowering at Steve, who frowned back but decided to ignore the tone this time. Pietro was worried for his sister, it was understandable.

“I agree,” he said, “but it’s easier said than done. We’ll contact Strange as soon as we can.”

They all knew there wasn’t much to be done before that, except hope she would recover on her own.

He tried not to think about how whatever had gotten Wanda might have affected Tony as well. He wasn’t a magic user, of course, but who knew what kind of energy Doom’s spell shields had hit them with, and Tony did use telepathy as part of his tech, as Steve now knew.

“Captain?” Jarvis soft voice came out behind him, sounding worried, and he turned.

“We can’t contact Tony,” Steve said quickly. “You know how to get to him directly, right?” he asked, trying to keep the worst of the urgency out of his voice.

Jarvis nodded.

“I’ll go with you,” Steve said.

*

Jarvis led him down into parts of the ship Steve had hardly known existed, through a warren of narrow hallways on the lower levels that were mostly used for storage and to house the larger machinery and plumbing. They passed two doors that were essentially hidden in the walls.

“Do you think he’s all right?” Steve asked, lowly, after Jarvis keyed in yet another code.

The older man looked at him and frowned.

“I don’t know,” he said. “We’ll see soon, it’s not much further now.”

See.

Steve hesitated. He wanted to know if Tony was ok as soon as possible, but he still didn’t have his permission to… but this was an emergency! And yet.

He cursed under his breath, earning a questioning look from Jarvis.

“I’ll close my eyes,” he said. “But I need to— I need to know if he’s all right. And if he isn’t I…” his throat closed up. If Tony wasn’t ok he didn’t care about any of the rest of it.

Jarvis sighed and pat his shoulder.

“It’ll be all right, Steve,” he said gently, even though he had to be worried too.

As they continued, there was only one more door at the head of the hallway, lighted, as the others had been, only by the patterns of bioluminescent paint. It seemed to shine brighter here.

Jarvis stopped with his hand on the door and looked back at Steve.

“If you would close your eyes, now is the time,” he said.

Steve swallowed, and heard the sound of the door receding into the wall.

“Step forward two steps here,” Jarvis instructed him. His voice had a soft echo to it, as if they were in a large, open room, and as he stepped forward Steve felt a brush of cool air on his skin and heard the faint sound of water.

Jarvis footsteps receded from him, though they didn’t go far, and then he spoke, with soft urgency: “Tony?”

Steve froze, and it took all his willpower not to open his eyes and look.

“How is he?” he asked instead.

He heard the splashing sound of a person wading into water.

Jarvis didn’t say anything for a moment. Finally, he spoke:

“He is well, he just can’t connect to his constructs right now. The magical implosion of Doom’s shields, he says.”

Another silence, with nothing but the sound of water and Jarvis breathing.

“Steve,” Jarvis said eventually. “Come this way.”

Steve stepped forward, starting as a something touched his arm, before he realized it was only Jarvis, leading him forward.

“Careful, the pool begins here,” he said, lowly. “There’s a step, but watch out, it gets deeper five steps out.”

The water he stepped into felt cool, but not cold. He could feel something like smooth concrete under his feet, just rough enough not to be slippery.

“Now, try not to argue too much,” Jarvis said, with only slight reproach that nevertheless made Steve feel about ten years old. “He says he’s fine, but I suspect the shock wave wasn’t exactly pleasant.”

“He’s hurt?” Steve asked, sharply, and stepped forward, only stopping when he felt no more floor ahead. “Tony?” he asked.

He started again as something touched him, on his face this time, something wispy, like the brush of a blade of grass. He thought he could see a pale glow of light though his eyelids. He wasn’t going to look, he kept telling himself.

More barely there, brushing things, settling lightly on his temples and on his hair, and then…

It was the oddest feeling. Like a wave of feeling and not… sound, exactly, something less tangible, but at the same time more immediate than sound would have been. He staggered under it, for a moment unable to make out anything but a mental pressure, and then, like a gate opening, it formed into meaning.

He had communicated through telepathy a few times before, so it wasn’t entirely new, the mixture of feelings and something more like speech directly into his mind.

The feelings were a swirl of trepidation, worry and… embarrassment, and Steve smiled despite himself. Oh, Tony, he thought, and felt the other mind bloom with a different kind of embarrassment entirely.

“I’ll leave you two to talk,” Jarvis commented drily, somewhere behind them, and a moment later Steve heard the door close.

“Are you ok?” Steve asked. It was still an effort to not open his eyes and look, and he felt like a character in an old myth, set to a test of trust. As if he opened his eyes Tony might just disappear.

Or just never trust him again, he thought more prosaically.

The thoughts to his expressed something like resignation, and then.

 _I’m fine, Steve_ , Tony thought at him, fondly. _The quantum-arcane alu-wave of the implosion functioned like an emp-pulse, and the feedback was something of a shock, but I recovered almost right away._

“Good,” Steve replied, ignoring the technobabble. He could tell that Tony was holding back a memory, that it’d probably hurt more than he was admitting, but he did seem fine, now.

 _Is Wanda allright?_ Tony asked, and went quiet at Steve inadvertedly thought of her, lying still and pale in Pietro’s arms.

“She’ll be allright, she’s strong,” Steve assured him.

 _She shouldn’t have to be,_ Tony thought, the guilt clear and not unexpected. Steve sighed.

He stood still in the water, the light still shining through his eyelids.

_Steve?_

“Yes?”

_You might as well open your eyes. If you’re sure you want to. I’m just… really not humanoid. At all._

He could feel all of Tony’s apprehension, like the sound of a file on glass. But there was resolve there, too.

 _Maybe you were right,_ Tony admitted reluctantly. _This would always have been between us, once you knew. That’s part of why I didn’t want you to. And maybe you had the right to know, anyway._

He sounded so dejected Steve reached out, unthinking, just wanting to touch him, or something, to ease that pain.

In his mind, there was something like a sad laugh.

Something wrapped around his hand, startling him, a thin appendage, but thicker than the previous ones. It felt warm, and not like anything human, but…

“I almost lost you again today, I really don’t care,” Steve replied. “We’re both here, we’re alive and I know _you_ , the rest of it is detail. Ok?”

 _Ok_ the thought came softly, like summer wind over a meadow. Like one of Tony’s rare, full and real smiles. You couldn’t fake that kind of feeling, no matter how much of a genius he was, Steve realized.

 _Steve, you’re so beautiful, your mind like this…_ Tony’s thoughts whispered, half ashamed as if he couldn’t stop himself. And behind it was old longing.

Steve smiled.

“Liar,” he said softly, “you did want this.”

But there was no lying here, thought to thought, feeling to feeling. It had all been real, hadn’t it?

Relief, and he wasn’t sure if it was his or Tony’s, or both of them, in a mirror.

_Yes._

_Open your eyes, Steve._ No hesitation there now.

He did, and smiled, and Tony’s feelings to his were rosy and glowing as a new dawn after a long night.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
